Removing Boundaries

The first novel that I wrote is Bradley Schuster and the Holy Grail. It is a very powerful, and at the same time very flawed book. It has been revised extensively before, and still languishes away. So I have made the commitment to fix it and submit it for publication. I truly love the book, and it’s too good to languish.

I began (yet again) a critical read of the manuscript at the end of February. What I discovered surprised me.

Gosh, I hate blogging. I love writing. Love editing. But don’t like blogging. More than a year after I set this up and I realize I repost other peoples’ blogs so I don’t have to write my own. For shame. No. I’m shameless about it.

You ever notice how when you’re around an intrusive noise–the washing machine out of balance and thumping, your neighbor using a chainsaw next door, the kid in the airplane in front of you screaming nonstop because his ears hurt–that when it stops, the silence is loud?

Monday was the first day in months that I had time and space to write but didn’t.

Boy, was it a lazy day. I kept wondering why I had so much time to get things done.

“So,” you ask, “after all the shit you’ve given us about writing every day, what are you doing not writing?”

Well, I have an excuse. It’s part of “the process.”

On Friday, I finished the first draft of Sir Kay. Now it has to sit for at least a week before I pick it up again. Get a little distance. Then I will read it critically with a…

2) Temperatures here in southeast Texas are more likely to be pleasant than disgustingly hot and muggy. Even rains occasionally.

3) 287,709 people have registered on the NaNoWriMo website to “compete” in the write-a-novel contest.

So how does it work? To “win,” you have to complete a 50,000 word 1st draft of a novel, or write 50,000 words of a longer novel, during the month of November. If you write every day, that’s 1,700 words a day (I average that, but I don’t write every day).

And what do you get if you win? Why, you have the first draft of a novel! If you register on their site and then confirm that you completed your work, you can also get a certificate. But writing your own novel is the real prize.

Back in 1971, I took a creative writing course from Larry McMurtry. It wasn’t a great course, by any means. He split time between reading from his new manuscript in final revision–All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers–and telling us of the latest saga in acting as an adviser to the filming of his earlier novel, The Last Picture Show. This was back before he published the Lonesome Dove series, which I consider to be his greatest accomplishment. Each week we turned in something we’d written, and they came back with a red check and occasionally a cryptic comment. Worse, I fancied myself a poet in those day.

But it was a great experience, even if it wasn’t a great course.

Larry McMurtry circa 1971

Many years later, I read a touching bit of wisdom by Larry McMurtry. I believe it was in the preface to